Use of a Fixed-Base Driving Simulator to Evaluate the Effects of Experience and PC-Based Risk Awareness Training on Drivers' Decisions

Abstract

Driver education classes were once seen as a remedy for young drivers' overinvolvement in crashes, but research results from the early 1970s were disappointing. Few changes in the content or methods of instruction occurred until recently, but this could change rapidly. Personal computers (PCs) can now present videos or photorealistic simulations of risky, cognitively demanding traffic scenarios that require quick responses without putting the participant at risk. As such programs proliferate, evaluating their effectiveness poses a major challenge. We report the use of a fixed-base driving simulator to study the effects of both experience on the road and PC-based risk awareness training on younger drivers' part-task simulator driving performance in risky traffic scenarios. We ran three groups of drivers on the simulator: one group first trained on the PC (younger, inexperienced drivers) and two groups who received no PC training (younger, inexperienced and experienced drivers). Overall, the younger, inexperienced drivers who were trained on a PC operated their vehicles in risky scenarios in ways that differed measurably from those of the untrained younger, inexperienced drivers and, more important, in ways that we believe would decrease their exposure to risk considering that, on average, their behavior was more similar to the behavior of the untrained, experienced drivers. More research is needed to demonstrate whether these findings apply on the open road to the larger population of younger drivers. However, at least initially, the research suggests that PC-based risk awareness training programs have the potential to reduce the high crash rate among younger, inexperienced drivers.

The Use of Interactive Simulations to Affect Driving Behaviour

“…Young drivers also tended to underestimate the risks involved in speeding [10] and what we have found is that they also tended to overestimate their driving ability. This means that the usual driver training and safety instructions may not be sufficient.…”

Technology and teen drivers

“…As an example, drivers' scanning becomes more sensitive to road type with experience (Underwood, Chapman, Brocklehurst, Underwood, & Crundall, 2003). The response of novice drivers to risky situations in a driving simulator confirms these findings and shows that young drivers lack awareness of risky situations (Fisher et al, 2002;Pollatsek et al, 2006). Novice drivers distribute their attention poorly because they rely on impoverished mental models to support feedforward control and because the demands at the operational level may undermine endogenous control of visual attention.…”

Surveillance: A Strategy for Improving Patient Safety in Acute and Critical Care Units

“…Eye-tracking is a current technology that has been used successfully in engineering and other sciences, for example, to study behaviors of automobile drivers during risky traffic situations. 36 Eye-tracking technology allows researchers to track nurses' actual eye movements during the surveillance process to identify the data to which a nurse selectively attends and the sequence in which the nurse attends to those data. Understanding the selective attention processes used by nurses can provide unprecedented insight into the surveillance process.…”